Welcome. I am an author and freelance columnist based in London, Ontario. Posted below is a selection of my recent columns as well as a link to my book, Against Judicial Activism: The Decline of Freedom and Democracy in Canada (McGill-Queen's University Press: 2006).

Tuesday, January 17, 2006

Impending end to corrupt Liberal rule

It’s been a long time in coming, but the good sense of the Canadian people seems about to prevail in federal politics, by kicking the corrupt Liberals out of office.

Former prime minister Jean Chretien got this lamentable era of Liberal corruption underway, by falsely promising during the 1993 federal election that he would get rid of the GST and renegotiate NAFTA. He did neither.

Today, the tables are somewhat reversed. Prime Minister Paul Martin is promising to retain the full weight of the GST, while the Conservative leader Stephen Harper has pledged to cut the hated seven-per-cent levy to six per cent immediately and to five per cent within five years.

Despite a succession of scandals including the misappropriation of $1 billion in grants by Human Resources Development Canada, Chretien twice contrived to lead the federal Liberals to re-election. For a while, it seemed that the Martin Liberals might also survive the Sponsorship scandal involving more than $1 million in illegal kickbacks of government money to the Quebec Liberal Party.

It seems, though, that most Canadians are now thoroughly fed up with Liberal corruption and have been favourably impressed by Harper’s achievement in uniting the right. As a result, the once mighty Liberal Party has plunged so low in the polls that even in Quebec, it now trails the Conservative party as well as the dominant Bloc Quebecois.

In desperation, the Liberals have resorted to an increasingly absurd smear campaign against their Conservative opponents. Martin, the “smearer in chief”, admits that he personally approved the notorious Liberal attack ad that denounced the Conservatives for planning to increase the number of Canadian soldiers stationed in Canadian cities. Keith Martin, the former Conservative MP who is seeking re-election as a pro-abortion and pro-same-sex marriage Liberal in British Columbia, has aptly derided this same Liberal ad as the work of an “idiot.”

Regardless, Martin keeps insisting that Harper has a “scary secret agenda” to curtail abortion on demand and reaffirm in Canadian law the traditional definition of marriage as the voluntary union of one man and one woman. Would that these Liberal charges were true. Harper has repeatedly pledged that his government would introduce no law on abortion and would not use the notwithstanding clause of the Constitution to prevent the Supreme Court of Canada from ultimately imposing same-sex marriage on Canadians.

Nonetheless, there are some fundamental differences between the Conservatives and their Liberal and New Democrat opponents, especially on key issues affecting the family. While the Liberals and New Democrats promise billions of dollars in extra funding for state-run day care centres, the Conservatives pledge to introduce a no-strings-attached, child care allowance of $1,200 per year for all children under the age of six. In addition, the Conservatives are promising to eliminate the tax disadvantage for two-parent families in which one parent provides full-time care for their children in the home.

In the last Parliament, every Conservative MP voted for a bill to raise the age of consent for sexual intercourse to 16 from 14, the lowest in the world. The great majority of Liberals and New Democrats opposed the legislation.

Likewise, the parties are divided on the euthanasia issue. Only the Conservative party can be counted upon to uphold the ban on physician-assisted suicide in the criminal code.

Of course, it’s not Parliament, but the appellate courts that have seized the initiative in amending the law on moral issues. Thus, it was not elected legislators, but unelected judges who eliminated protection for pre-born babies in Canadian law, reduced the age of consent for sodomy from 18 to 14 and imposed same-sex marriage. Just four days before Christmas, the Supreme Court of Canada quashed the longstanding ban in the criminal code on the performance of group sex in a public place.

That’s fine with Martin. He has promised to eliminate federal use of the notwithstanding clause of the Constitution that gives Parliament the power to override illegitimate rulings by unelected judges that presume to change, rather than uphold, the law.

Will Harper and his Conservative colleagues finally put an end to 12 years of Liberal corruption and connivance in the judicial abuse of power on Jan. 23? Let us hope so.